Theater and Dance
In defense of Shakespeare—a conversation with veteran Australian actor and director John Bell
By David Walsh, December 13, 2011
A conversation with distinguished Australian actor and director John Bell, who founded the Bell Shakespeare theatre company in 1990.
Asuncion: Inauspicious debut play from film actor Jesse Eisenberg
By Robert Fowler, November 15, 2011
The first play by actor Jesse Eisenberg is apparently his effort to combat “political correctness,” among other things. The result is muddled.
Theater review
Betrayed: An American liberal looks at the disaster he helped bring about in Iraq
By Richard Adams, October 31, 2011
Journalist George Packer’s play considers the fate of three Iraqi translators and collaborators with the American occupation.
At the Public Theater in New York
“Sweet and Sad”: An honest, probing look at life on the anniversary of 9/11
By Fred Mazelis, October 3, 2011
This is the second play in a projected trilogy by Richard Nelson dealing with ordinary events in the life of a family centered in the town of Rhinebeck, New York.
The Shaw Festival’s 50th Season: George Bernard Shaw’s Heartbreak House
By Joanne Laurier, July 23, 2011
Heartbreak House is the featured work this year at the Shaw Festival in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, celebrating its 50th anniversary in 2011.
Financial crisis deepens at New York City Opera
By Fred Mazelis, July 21, 2011
On July 12, City Opera artistic director George Steel held a news conference to announce that the company would stage a total of only four productions in the 2011-12 season, to be held at three different venues around the city.
An Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism: Tony Kushner looks at the decay of the “left”
By Fred Mazelis, July 20, 2011
Playwright Tony Kushner’s most recent work takes up unusual subject matter: the decline of trade unionism and the American Communist Party.
Theater review
Tom Jacobson’s The Chinese Massacre (Annotated)…or Massacred History (Restored)
By Richard Adams, May 30, 2011
The Chinese Massacre (Annotated), written by Tom Jacobson, directed by Jeff Liu and presented by Circle X Theatre Company at the Atwater Village Theatre, Los Angeles. April 22-May 28, 2011.
Previews for “Spider-Man” musical in New York produce a rash of injuries
By Peter Daniels, December 29, 2010
In the latest of a series of accidents and resulting injuries that have plagued the forthcoming musical “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark,” now in previews in New York City, a 31-year-old actor was hurt December 20.
Angels in America returns to New York
By J. Cooper, November 30, 2010
The Signature Theater revival of Tony Kushner’s Angels in America brings this well-known play back to the New York stage to mark the 20th year of the theater, as well as the 25th anniversary of the year in which the drama takes place.
Danton’s Death at the National Theatre
By Ann Talbot, September 2, 2010
Danton’s Death, the famed play by German writer Georg Büchner, follows the conflict which took place in March and April 1794 within the “Mountain”—the most revolutionary wing of the French National Convention.
Shostakovich’s The Nose finds its way to the opera stage
By Fred Mazelis, April 6, 2010
Shostakovich’s first opera, The Nose, recently received its premiere production at New York’s Metropolitan Opera, more than 80 years after it first appeared.
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